is it viable cold fusion or an imminent scam?

Is it just me, or has it been a while since we last heard about cold fusion? The last time it was brought into the limelight was when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann claimed to have cracked it only to have their device questioned when scientists across the world failed to replicate their claimed results. But recently, two physicists from Italy are claiming that they not only managed to create cold fusion, but that they have a reactor ready to be sold to investors looking for a source of cheap and plentiful energy. Surprisingly, they haven’t been able to publish their results in a peer reviewed journal because their paper simply states that power is being generated by their reactor and leave it at that, and their patent for a cold fusion reactor was turned down since they neglected to explain how the device is supposed to work, which generally tends to be a requirement for a patent. Nevertheless, they’ve successfully been powering an undisclosed factory for two years with their little machine, and are ready to go to market with it, declaring that the time for scientific debates is over and the it’ll be up to their customers to decide whether the device works or not. So, how do you say “red flags” in Italian?

Let’s think about this for a second. Despite Mike Adam’s conspiracy theories regarding fusion, trying to get two atoms to combine into one is no easy feat and we’re still a long ways away from viable industrial reactors despite years of sustained effort, often in the wake of budget cuts and constant nay-saying. The only place in our solar system where the kind of powerful fusion reactions we want to generate take place, is deep in the core of the Sun, at 13.6 million °C and 340 billion atmospheres. That’s roughly 6 trillion psi, the equivalent of laying on your back and balancing a typical asteroid on your chest. Yeah, that’s what it takes to overcome the Coulomb barrier and turn hydrogen into helium in the natural world, and the most promising reactor designs so far produce nearly 100 million °C while being pushed to ~150 million °C and beyond to achieve sustained fusion, to produce maybe 1.5 times the energy put into the reaction at best. And now here come two guys who not only claim that they’ve tamed fusion and can produce 31 times the power they put into the system (fusion could be considered commercially viable when it provides ten times the power it’s fed), and that they’re done all this on a tabletop and at room temperature. Wouldn’t you be a little suspicious of these claims? And would it comfort you to know that they have no idea how their creation works, why we’re not detecting any neutrons or gamma rays which should easily penetrate their shielding, and claim they’ve been using it for two years?

Were someone to succeed in creating tabletop fusion, the radiation from the resulting reaction would melt the table. And the researchers. The device being advertised by Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi looks like it may be missing the hundred tons or so of shielding that would be required to keep the reaction from giving them, and everyone around them, radiation poisoning, and if the shielding they do have really does contain gamma rays and neutrons as well as they claim, it must be the most incredible radiation shield ever built. Yes, it’s not impossible that they managed to find some loophole in the laws of physics by serendipity and build a reactor that’s several decades, if not a century, ahead of our current capabilities. But it’s far more likely that this is just a publicity stunt and once they line up enough gullible investors looking for a way to get rich quick, that will be the last time we ever hear of this cold fusion reactor. Or the physicists, who’ll be busy enjoying their cash on a secluded island somewhere in the tropics. There’s been a whole lot of wishful thinking about cold fusion and there are people out there convinced that it works and that it’s being constantly replicated, especially by some of the U.S. Navy’s top labs seeking new and better reactors for their aircraft carriers, but the truth of the matter is that a working cold fusion reactor would already be put to work if it were real and viable. So where is it?

Look, I’m going to be the last person who complains if a real cold fusion reactor shows up, complete with the kind of peer-reviewed science and real, working prototypes spewing all the right neutrons and gamma rays in every direction at room temperature, or even kitchen oven or pottery kiln temperature for that matter. However, there are also some very basic laws of physics to consider here and this reactor is fishy from every angle you can think of. The scientists won’t explain how their device works, won’t give any details about what factory one of their prototypes has been powering for two years, won’t provide any data on the physics of their reactor, and won’t let anyone independently verify it, insisting that their critics will have to wait after they set up their energy conglomerate, built on cold fusion power plants. Is there not a single detail in this story that doesn’t raise any major red flags? So if you were thinking of getting in on the ground floor of tomorrow’s energy source with our intrepid Italian duo, save your money. Unless you’d like to pay for their getaway piña coladas of course…